art as mirror/eating out

I love to visit NYC, but who can live there? It could never be a home for me. Maybe if I were obscenely rich, it could. It’s too crazy, too scary, too much for my attention deficited brain to take in more than a couple of days worth. I’m always glad to get there but I’m as glad to get home, where it’s quiet enough to think about the things I’ve seen. How many ideas did I come home with from my visit there in Oct.? Six, seven? How many made it from word sketch, to pencil, to pixel, to post? I’m attaching 2 to this one and I think I can get 2 more up soon.

Art as mirror

Art to the rich is mostly objects to be possessed to impress the other rich. To an artist an art object is mostly a more pragmatic one as it can be traded for shelter or food. I admit I want to impress with my art and I’ll allow your argument that even the rich have aesthetic needs. Nothing is black and white.

But art can still be very different to those two kinds of people. The rich lady looking at art sees it as a mirror held at an angle showing impressed peers. She doesn’t see the artist at all. He’s as invisible to her as a homeless guy she’d subconsciously detour. But when the artist looks at his art, it’s also a mirror held at an angle, he sees her from a point of view she’d rather not be looked at. And he is recording what he sees.

Eating out

This is another point of view thing; his, hers and ours. Women are the practical sex. This one is just eating a quick lunch; catching a breeze on hot afternoon. Men tend to be more metaphorical. Our man, here, is desiring and fearing, as he eats, for he sees what she’s catching the breeze with at the same time as he imagines the hot dog she’s about to chomp down on to be more than wiener. From where we stand we see both and we see a metaphor neither of them can; him about to nibble a bit of her. She’s just enjoying her hour off. He’s conflicted and upset. And we are just an artist from out of town taking in (and making up) the sights. What would either of them think of what we see?